This session was played on 2025-12-20. Clark, Gaia and Maelle work as local guides for Riung's vacation day in the Nuskom Zone
A week after the Umichooan Inquiry on Rigasian Issues ended unsatisfactorily for all involved parts, Claire, Gaia and Maelle are asked to come to the Guildhouse by Ferret; they arrive to find a huge pile of fresh steel ingots in the courtyard and a very confused trucker being given instructions by Eliza Baron.
On meeting Ferret, they learn that the ingots are payment given to the Guild house by Riung, who has requested them three to work one day as her guides to do a tour of the Deep Nuskom Zone in her vacation day.
So two days later, they found themselves walking with Riung through the now abandoned staging ground for the Nuskom Yearly Hunt, and crossing the wall into the outer zone.
This becomes a metaphorical walk through memory lane, as they step through places where previous sessions have taken place.
They find themselves close to the place where Agent Kort's helicopter crashed, and Riung notices the missing soldiers that got unstuck from regular spacetime, now dead but still invisible to the naked eye.
They follow the lake bank up to a stream, and follow the stream upwards to the place where they found the glove, fought Victor Vituska and Zach Shpak was frozen. Except that the jeep is broken down, rusted and covered in vegetation, and the only signs of the battle are the tree that Vituska almost shredded, now fallen to the ground, with a mere stump remaining.
They follow the path where they pursued Maal towards the Deep Zone, until they reach the place where the first gravity anomalies start, and Riung notices that there are many of them as they go deeper and deeper.
They reach the border of the Deep Zone, and there Derek stops to wait, to be their help in case something happens. And from there, they go into the area originally blasted by the Bomb.
Maelle is confused because the remains of any streets they might remember from their childhood have been totally erased by the bomb and time, but then they start noticing other marks: a broken down rigasian tank next to the skeletal remains of an anagusi war wolf, and as they advance more and more signs of the Kesizman incursion and Rigasian counterattack.
And finally, close to ground zero, they find the tank that Claire managed to freeze so long ago. And it “speaks”.
Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.
Gaia and Riung are understandably creeped, not only because of the usual, but because the message is getting stronger and stronger. First Maelle, and then Claire start getting it.
Gaia has a brainwave and notes that the dream message becoming stronger sounds very similar to what the glass bones she has been experimenting with do. She says this aloud, but neither of her companions remember having a glass bone on them.
Claire just… forgot about it.
And then the bone in Claire's possession manages to actualized an echo of something that looks very much like a woman, flayed alive, and it attacks Claire as it shouts “Let me out!”
They soon discover that whatever this one manifestation is, it is continuously adapting to what they do. It first becomes hard enough to not be hurt by Maelle's sword, then its body becomes a loose collection of worm-looking things that can't be hurt by bullets, then they become bubbling and hot, and immune to Claire's attempts to freeze them.
And then Gaia tries to connect with its mind, and can only feel something incredibly vast and far away repeating Let me out time and time again.
Claire finds herself in trouble because the mass of worms tries to drown and choke her, but in the end, Maelle and Gaia manage to improvise a molotov cocktail to burn what remains to cinders, and they tend to Claire's wounds.
Maelle and Gaia decide that they have now a probably intact Koteglia Mechanism that they can take, and try to convince Claire (still disgusted by the worm situation) to unfreeze the tank, and Riung (still reeling from whatever the mind connected to that thing was) to help them disarm the mechanism. Both Claire and Riung accept, and Maelle goes into the very dark and cramped tank to disengage the safeties and take the core.
They manage it, but while they're celebrating, the Puppeteer appears behind them, faking worry for what Riung has done, and what will her handlers think.
Gaia and Maelle explode in anger, and the Puppeteer brushes most of it off, but draws the line at Maelle shouting at his face. He then holds them in the air and threatens, and is only stopped by Riung getting in the way and saying she accepts whatever he wants.
So now they have a Koteglia Mechanism, but Riung owes the Puppeteer a favor.
Rose was getting ready to release a game.
An alternate title/tagline for the session would have been Memory Lane, since quite a bit of it consisted on the party showing Riung the places where most their adventures in the zone happened, and reminiscing about it.
After the attack on the Valtshoran delegation in Dimes, at least one of the candidates for the elections has dropped from the race and lost his foot; in contrast Iorena had some posters of herself done showing her eyepatch that says “Still Here”.
The fight with the Demiurge's Manifestation's Mote's Echo was not actually in the original campaign notes; instead the players would face a quite powerful but regular aberration. But Claire's player decided to play with a glass bone to see what happened. She found out.
A Demiurge Mote would have been the monster hunting the party in the halloween session if the players had chosen to play as the Rigasian spelunkers that found the original Sludge.
At the end of the fight, Claire was considering jumping into a gravitational anomaly just to get something new to hurt the Thing, then Maelle remembered the bottle of almost pure ethanol they were carrying.
Getting the Koteglia Mechanism out of the tank required a natural +4 in addition to Riung's guidance and Maelle managed it, even if they had to burn all their remaining fate points to do so.
We thought that the players hated Victor Vituska, but that hate is nothing compared to the loathing they seem to feel for the Puppeteer.
The Clockmaker wants out.